Ina Maka says, "Every soul that passes from the Earth comes to Me. Not all come here, to this place—only My chosen ones. But for them, as for the others, a reckoning must be made. You know this."

"I know it," Koda says.

"See," says Ina Maka. She folds her hands, then draws them apart. Between them appears a beaten copper bowl, filled with clear water. Koda trails a finger over its surface, sending ripples out from the center toward the rim. A cloud forms in its wake, swirling and spiraling in upon itself like the nebulae of space, clearing finally to show a still, dark mirror. Figures move within it, figures with faces she recognizes. "See," says Ina Maka again, and she leans closer to look.

She sees her grandfather, seated crosslegged before an open-air fire, patiently grinding leaves and stems together in a clay bowl. "You must remember the proportions, Tunkshila. Just enough, this will ease Grandma Jumping Bull’s asthma. Too much, and it could kill her. Now say the names of the plants that we use."

A high, childish voice recites, "Nightshade, datura, willow bark. Mash it all together so the sick person can smoke it."

"And what happens if you put in too much datura?"

"The person sees things. Things that aren’t there."

Her grandfather reaches up from his work to tousle her hair. "That’s good, little one. You’ll be a fine healer."

"When you cried for a vision," Ina Maka says, "you were called as a healer. You have healed the four-footed, the two-legged and the winged. You have comforted hurts of the body and of the spirit. You have done well. "

The water clouds again, shifting, clears a second time.

She strides across the playground of Sacred Heart Lakota School, her arms at her sides stiff as her starched blouse, her fists clenched. "Don’t hit him. Don’t you dare hit him."

An older boy, blond, turns sneering to her, his fists clenched. "And what are ya gonna do about it, prairie nigger? Prairie nigger bitch?" And with that he swings his fist back and hits, not Dakota, but a smaller boy with a delicate face almost like a girl’s. "Fucking liitle fag. Faggot. Faggot. Faggot.."

Later, much later, Dakota stands in the infirmary while Sister Frances bandages her knuckles. "Well," the Sister smiles ruefully, "Our Lord did say he came to bring not peace but a sword. Next time, though, call one of the teachers, okay?"

The water shifts again, and Koda strides down a white corridor where women spill out from steel-doored cells, embracing Koda, embracing the soldiers who follow her. The soldiers multiply suddenly, till they are a company, a batallion, racing in Dakota’s wake as she runs like an antelope sure footed over the broken remains of a bridge to reinforce her brother’s troops on the far side, mowing down the inexorably advancing soldiers whose titanium hides shine in the sun, shouting her name, shouting again as she leads them back in triumph, shouting caution as the water roils yet again, and she battles her way around a curving corridor, fighting with stolen guns, a bronze sculpture like a hammer hung at her belt, grenades plucked from the enemy. And she staggers back against a door and is falling, falling, into nothingness, into here, into this place where the dimensions of space fold in upon themselves.

"When you cried for a vision," Ina Maka says, "you asked Wakan Tanka to make you a warrior for the liberation of our people. The call has come, though late. You have fought with courage for justice and the freedom of all peoples. You have done well."

And the water ripples yet a third time.

She climbs a narrow path along the flank of a mountain. The pack on her back pulls heavily at the shoulder straps, her belt drags at her waist, heavy with canteen and axe and flashlight. Ahead of her and above, so that her smooth brown knees are just at Koda’s eyelevel, Tali scrambles up the trail. "We’re—almost—there—" she pants. "Just—a hundred—or so—meters to go."

"We’d better be. Next time—next time—we rent—a fuckin’—donkey."

"Don’t care if—it fucks--or not. Just so—it carries-- the stuff."

At the summit they set up their camp, both grumbling. Later, though, as they sit at the edge of the overhang, with the wide plain of Argos stretched out before them in the evening light, Koda takes Tali’s hand in hers. She says, "You know, we’ve been taking a lot for granted."

Tali turns troubled eyes to her. "Is something wrong?"

"Not if you answer my question right," says Koda, tracing a circle around the base of the third slim finger on Tali’s left hand.

And the water shifts again, and Kirsten’s face looks up at her, hair pale as cornsilk, eyes bruised and staring blankly at something before her, something Koda cannot see. She does not speak; there is no need. It is the face of a woman who sees death in front of her. And welcomes it.

Ina Maka says, "You have loved greatly, not once but twice, both times with generosity and honor. All those things which Wakan Tanka planted in your soul at the moment of your creation have come to fruition in you. The part of you that is Wakan Tanka weighs equally with that part that is none but your own. And now there is a choice you must make."

"It is a choice you must make freely," Tali says softly.

"It is a choice you must make wisely," the wolf adds, his human voice a rumble in his throat.

"What choice is that?" Koda’s glance darts from Ina Maka to Tali, back to Wa Uspewikakiyapi. She knows the teachings of her people. She will be sent back to Earth to be reborn. Or she will be allowed to follow the Ghost Road to its ending in the Other Side Camp, where she will sit at the fires of the wise for all the turnings of the ages. It is Ina Maka’s decision, not hers. "I don’t understand."

"You meet the measure," Ina Maka says again. You may walk the Blue Road now and not turn back. That is your right."

"You can be released from the cycle of birth and death and rebirth," says Tali.

"Or you can go back, now, to your life as Dakota Rivers." The wolf cocks his head to look at her sidelong. "You can take up the work of rebuilding the world that humans have wrecked."

"But I’m dead," she blurts, remembering her ravaged body, the gaping wounds that laid it open from thigh to shoulder. "Dead. A mess. Cannot-resuscitate dead."

"It is, in certain circumstances, a curable condition," he says. His eyes glint with laughter.

"Stop wanting."

"Stop desiring."

"Stop willing."

"Look again," says Ina Maka.

The water swirls and clears yet again. On an open field two warbands slash at each other with blades like machetes, blows falling on round shields. Almost all are women. Some wear crude tunics, others the rags of manufactured clothing. As one warrior moves across her sight, she glimpses a Levi’s label at the waist of her tattered jeans. Clouds cross the sun, and when the light returns it shows the wreckage of a great city. Row houses line the street, mansions in their day. From one door emerges a veiled woman, covered from head to foot, not so much as an ankle showing. She carries a basket, and a large cross hangs from her neck. She passes other veiled figures on the street but speaks to none of them. Suddenly a scream pierces the air, and a woman, her face bare, streaks past, running for her life. Behind her, gaining on her, come half a dozen men, all shouting. "Whore! Harlot! Stone her!" As Koda watches, one of them trips her to the ground, and the vision fades. When it clears again, it shows only a long line of naked women, a few naked men among them, shuffling along in a straggling line. Their hands are tied behind their backs, while ropes link each to the two before and behind.

Appalled, Koda looks up at Ina Maka. "That’s not—"

"But it is. Slaves."

"Why are you showing me this?"

"It is a future," Tali says softly. "It is what may be."

"Or there may be this," Wa Uspewikakiyape says. One huge paw stirs the water again.

The ripples clear onto another open field. In the center of this one, though, stands a sun dance pole, a cottonwood tree stripped of its branches and crowned with a buffalo skull. The dancing ground is marked off by arbors encircling it, leaving only a single opening to the east. A great drum beats out a steady rhythm, and a column of dancers enters with the rising sun behind them. The leader is a young woman with copper skin and golden eyes, with black hair that curls a little from her part to her braids, a generous mouth above a firm chin. A light is on her as she moves, her back straight, her shoulders square as she carries an eagle-wing fan before her. Behind her come young men and women of every color and shape, white and black and brown, tall and short, grey-eyed and almond-eyed. The young men wear the spruce wreathes of pledged dancers, their eagle-bone whistles hung about their necks. Behind them come their elders, and Koda starts as she recognizes Maggie, her hair iron grey now, and Andrews, with salt-and-paprika braids to his waist. At the end comes Tacoma, his chest scarred with decades of the Sun Dance, carrying the sacred pipe and the medicine bundle of the Sun Dance Chief.

She searches the faces of the dancers. "I don’t see—"

"Look here," says Oka, pointing to a pair of figures seated beneath the arbor.

A small woman with pale braids, mostly grey now, sits in the place of honor. The stand before her holds dozens of pipes, some in traditional styles, others not. Her dress of white buckskin is embroidered thickly with turquoise and shell; over her bodice is worked the eight-legged shape of Inktomi, Spider Woman. Her face, though still lovely, shows the marks of hard decisions, and a faint white scar runs from the center of her brow to the outer edge of her left eyebrow. Beside her sits another woman, tall and copper-skinned and blue-eyed, her hair snow-white. In her hand she holds a pipe like a scepter; beside her stands a lance plumed from tip to butt with eagle feathers. Medicine Chief. War Chief. Not for more than a hundred years has one of her people been both.

Looking closely, there is something strange about the woman’s hands, markings of some kind, but she cannot quite make them out.

"That’s not—" she blurts.

"But it is," says Ina Maka. "It is, if you choose to return. Understand. There will still be chaos, all those things you saw first. It is what happens next that will be determined by whether you stay or return."

If she stays, she can be with Tali, her beloved, who has also passed beyond the wheel of birth and rebirth. She can sit at the council fire beside Wa Uspewikiyape, her teacher.

She will have peace. Wisdom.

If she returns, she will fight beside Kirsten, the other half of her soul. Beside her parents. Tacoma, Manny, Maggie.

It will be a lifetime of war, with peace, perhaps, at the end. A struggle that will last beyond any reasonable lifetime. A world thrown back into its own history.

She says, to gain time, "Who is she? The girl at the Sun Dance?"

Tali smiles and unfolds the shawl she wears. In the crook of her arm lies a swaddled infant, sleeping peacefully. "She will return, too," says Tali.

For a time no one speaks. Finally, Koda bows her head. Not my will. "I will go back," she says.

"Your choice is a wise one," Ina Maka answers. "You will not go unprepared."

Tali steps forward then, and kisses her gently on the lips. "Take with you the gift of speech without words and hearing without ears." Her hand brushes Koda’s, a feather touch. "Be happy."

Ina Maka lays a hand between Koda’s breasts. "Take with you the gift of an open heart, to know the pain and joy of those you will lead." A warmth gathers in Koda’s chest, radiating out from under her heart to feel the pride and joy in Oka, the purity of Tali’s love, the deep grace in Ina Maka.

Last of all, Wa Uspewikakiyapi lays his great paws against her palms. "Take with you the gift of healing, body and spirit." She holds onto him for a long moment, as she would another human, taking in a measure of his strength and courage.

"Until we meet again," says Ina Maka. And she is falling again, falling through space, tumbling through the bowl of the Dipper where the renewed loss of Tali and Wa Uspewikiyape rips through her like a blade. With it comes the sharpness of Kirsten’s pain and her own grief, for Tali, for Wa Uspewikakiyapi, for Kirsten, for herself, drawing her down and down. Like a comet she plunges once again into the plane of the solar system, into the thin shell of atmosphere about the Earth. A winged shape rises to meet her in the dawn, and they spiral together down the air, Wiyo’s cry of triumph ringing through her soul. She breaks through the roof of the Westerhaus Institute, streaks downward to the sixth level through concrete and steel. The part of herself that hovers by Kirsten comes whirling back to her, and she slams once again back into her body and is flesh again.

She has a body. She is alive. She is acutely uncomfortable.

The three thoughts come to her as consciousness returns by degrees. Behind her, at the desk, Koda can hear the clatter of a computer keyboard. From the hallway comes a continuous spatter of water, and the acrid smell of smoke. Fire. We should probably get out of here. Like yesterday. But languor holds her where she is, and she takes inventory of her body. Her heart pumps satisfactorily. She can breathe; the odor of burning is evidence enough for that. Where there should be shattered bone, torn muscle, ruined blood vessels, screaming nerves, there is only warmth and knots of cramping muscles in her shoulders, her legs, her ribs. A great bell tolls in her head, pounding with the pulse in her ears. I thought— Gods, what a dream! Something must’ve coldcocked me.

But it doesn’t matter what she thought. Kirsten needs help.

Time to move. Time to get up.

Koda sits up, running her hands over her face. Her skin is sticky with blood still, her hair stiff with it. Her hands burn fever-hot.

Opening her eyes, she gazes down at them. On the palms of both, clear and distinct, are the prints of a wolf’s paws.

Wa Uspewikakiyape. His paws in her hands. Giving her the gift of healing.

Real, then, all of it. It all happened. I died. And now I’m back.

Right.

Worry about that later.

She is stiff. With an effort, she gets her feet under her, levers herself up and turns, steadying herself with outstretched arms. Kirsten sits behind the desk, her face pale and immobile as a mask. Her fingers fly over the keyboard, the only part of her that seems alive. Koda gives a wordless cry and steps toward her.

* * *

Kirsten feels her body begin to give out just as the last lines of code start their slow crawl across the monitor before her. Her implants have been shorting in and out in brief, painful bursts for the past half hour. Blood continues to trail slowly from her nose, spattering the glass of the table beneath, and she fears her ears are bleeding as well. Her heart is laboring in her chest, sometimes scaring her with runs of abnormal beats that, mercifully, settle back into a somewhat normal rhythm. Just gotta get this last one, she thinks. Just this last one, and then I can rest. Then I can be with…

No. Best not to think about that. Best to simply concentrate on getting the job done. She will have all the time in the world to think about that later…assuming the dead continue to think in some form or other.

The last string comes finally across, and her raw and bleeding fingers pound the keyboard with increasing rapidity, trying to beat the deadline it seems her own body has set for her. She grits her teeth as unconsciousness begins to steal her mind away from her, tapping out the final countermand that, she prays, will turn off the androids forever, beyond any and all hope of them ever being restarted again.

With the last line of code in place, she hits enter, then falls over, not even feeling the pain of her face impacting with the cold, hard glass of the table, and certainly not seeing Adam take a last look at her before becoming completely immobile and lifeless. If she had been able to look, she would have seen a smile of thanks on his face.

* * *

Some time later—it could have been seconds, it could have been decades for all she’s aware—she feels herself come awake. She tries to take stock of her body, but soon realizes it’s a fruitless proposition. The pounding in her head makes all other points moot. She does realize, however, that she is, once again, deaf. Hmm. I’m dead, I’m deaf, and my head still hurts. This afterlife shit sure isn’t what I heard advertised, that’s for sure. Hope I come back as a hornet. I’d love to sting that pulpit pounding fire and brimstone preacher my mother dragged me to right in the—

Her thoughts trail off as she realizes what it is that has awoken her. A light so brilliant that it shines through her closed lids as if they were thin panes of clear glass. Her lashes flutter as she attempts to coax her eyes open just a crack. They slam closed tightly as the nearly blinding light sears an afterimage across the backs of her lids in brilliant blues and golds.

Oh, shit, I'm not dead. Circuit's shorted out and we're gonna have a fire here any second.

Then I will be dead. Works. She raises an arm to cover her eyes and shut out the blinding light.

Burning's a bad way to go. A really bad way.